MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The aviation market in Latin America and the Caribbean should by early 2024 recover to the size it was before the coronavirus pandemic, Arturo Barreira, regional chief of European aircraft maker Airbus, said on Thursday.

Last year’s COVID-19 medical emergency saw civil aviation suffer severe travel restrictions. But, after a period of gradual recovery, it began to recover.

Barreira stated that different recovery rates are being observed in an interview with Reuters. The domestic and tourist markets are clearly leading, but long-distance and business markets will be slower.

He stated that the overall market will be at its pre-pandemic level by 2023 or 2024.

Regional improvement will be driven mainly by Mexico’s low-cost airline VivaAerobus, Volaris and Volaris. These are two Airbus customers.

According to official data, Mexican airlines handled 28.6 millions passengers in the period January-July, an increase of more than 50% compared with last year. This was still a significant decrease from the 40.4 million passengers who traveled the same route in 2019

Barreira stated that Airbus had delivered 25 planes to regional airlines in 2021. This is two less than the total number of aircraft shipped during 2020. Barreira said that Airbus expects to sell 27 more aircraft in 2019, but he declined to specify exactly how many.

Nearly 700 Airbus aircraft are in operation in Latin America, the Caribbean and 60% of their fleet is currently in service.